Interesting that KDE appears to be going through what GNOME went through back in the 1.4 > 2.0 transition. There's all sorts of bitching and moaning going on about the recent KDE 4.1 release. Some writers have even employed the hyperbolic description of a civil war.

One of the books I'm currently reading is A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein by Palle Yourgrau. Essentially, it concerns Gödel's conclusion that the Theory of Relativity naturally leads to a universe where time isn't real. I also started The End of Time by Julian Barbour, who comes up with a similar conclusion, though his formulation is much more recent, and in the few pages that I have read, he necessarily bases his ideas partly on the way that the brain processes information (without actually going into the messy neuroanatomically and neuromolecular details.)

There is a woman whose name I don't even know for which I have this desperate, raw attraction to. I see her from time to time, as we occupy opposite ends of an extremely large social millieu, as friends of friends of friends of friends. I don't know what it is about her, but I find my eyes wandering toward her if I don't monitor myself, even as she's hanging on the arm of some guy. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I've never had an attraction like this before.

So I was this close to getting to sleep at a reasonable hour last night, but then I heard that the Perseid meteor shower was supposed to peak the evening of Aug 11/early morning of Aug 12. I tried to think of the darkest place within a reasonable distance. The Anza-Borrego Desert came to mind, but that was a good two hour drive into the middle of nowhere, so I figured driving through the Temecula Valley on the way to L.A. would suffice.

not just loneliness weighing gravid, doleful,
becoming this furtiveness rooted, still
seeming in the light to be seen, yet unseen
amidst the hundred thousand voices seething, roiling, teeming
the faces, the gestures, all worn-down by rehearsal
words spoken by rote, by habit, stripped of meaning

in this voiceless silence interrupted
by the whirring internal combustion
engines, rubber running across worn-down
concrete, these assemblies of metal growl
past, slashing through the air like two-ton knives
at 70 miles per hour, almost
like the tumult of a rushing river
or waves crashing down on the silver shore
my mind lost in the eddies and whirpools
of wind and debris, as the sunlight streams
in, vainly trying to evaporate
the dark mood crouching upon my soul like
a gremlin ready to ambush and havoc

a phantom lifestyle imagined by my fevered mind where there would be someone at home who would wish me luck and send me out with a hug and a kiss, and there would be someone to look forward to seeing once
it's all over

So I finally met my neighbors the other day, after living next to them for several months, and hearing all sorts of snippets of conversations as they smoked their cigarettes outside my open window. It's kind of funny that I plan on moving out at the end of the month, but, oh well. After four years of living in this pit, I'm about ready for a change.

I'm not sure where I pulled the number '8' from, but it may be from pathology class from the second year of med school. 8 minutes is the amount of time you've got before the lack of oxygen starts causing permanent damage (such that if you do manage to restart the heart and/or reopen the blocked vessel, you may actually cause even more damage than what has already been done—so-called reperfusion injury.)

Bewilderment spins mercilessly around my heart
weaves/binds/patterns/stitches, embedded like magical runes
threads of fate, minutest of imperfections becomes a message
that I cannot decipher, much less interpret

The powers-that-be will always try to tell you that you can't make a difference. But that is and always will be bullshit. This year, the Dems grok it. The promise of America has always been about the little people. This isn't some brainwashed mob following some messianic figure out into the desert. These are people who have been kicked into the ground for the last eight years, who finally realize that, by banding together with like-minded people, they do have the power change things. Obama is only one person. At best, he can only try to get the doors open. It has always been, will always be, only ourselves who can get us over the threshold.

I understand John McCain likes games of chance, and I guess selecting Sarah Palin is his way of saying "jacta alea est." Statistically speaking, McCain's chance of mortality—even though ostensibly, he is at the peak of health for his age—is significant. So what this might suggest is that the Republicans are actually willing to elect a woman to the presidency. While I disagree with just about everything she stands for, that's kind of impressive. I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime, that the party that has been trying its damndest to preserve patriarchy and has at times even openly professed misogyny would actually allow even the slightest possibility that a woman would lead our nation.